Böhler was born in Frankfurt, Germany on December 31, 1712. Peter was the fourth child of Brewers Johann Konrad Peter Böhler and his wife Antonetta Elisabetha. Böhler attended school in Frankfurt, and went to the University of Jena in 1831. His father wanted him to study medicine, but Böhler was drawn into studying theology by the university's well-known faculty members such as Johann Franz Buddeus, Johann Georg Walch and Nicolaus Ludwig Zinzendorf. Walch and Zinzendorf greatly influence on Böhler, and showed him the ways of pietism, a movement within Lutheranism that was instrumental in the upbringing of the Methodist movement later started by John Wesley. The Pietist movement combined the Lutheran emphasis on biblical doctrine with the reformed, and especially Puritan, emphasis on indivi